standing in the leg of a giant

these guys are standing in one of the gigantic legs belonging to the ‘tallest structure ever moved by humans over the surface of the earth’: the 1/2km tall ‘troll a’ offshore gas platform in the north sea, owned by shell oil. with a total weight of 1.2million tonnes, the structure was built using 245,000m3 of concrete and 100′000 tonnes of steel (apparently the equivalent of 15 eiffel towers), the walls of its legs measuring over a metre thick.

following construction, over a period of 7 days, ‘troll a’ was towed from rogaland in norway to the troll gas field in the north sea - a total of 174 nautical miles.

the picture below illustrates the massive scale of the platform…

all pictures from statoil.